More than 38,000 signatures collected for proposal that would decriminalize abortion in city despite statewide ban

Campaigners in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday delivered more than 38,000 signatures to the city clerk’s office, petitioning for a May vote that would decriminalize abortion in the city.

Abortion in Texas has been banned since August 2022, following the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade last summer.

The campaigners hope to pass what they are calling the San Antonio Justice Charter, which would also end criminalization for low-level marijuana possession, and put limits on police use of no-knock warrants and chokeholds.

San Antonio, Austin and Waco – all in Texas – already passed resolutions to de-prioritize the investigation of abortion crimes through their city councils in 2022, at the same time as a string of progressive district attorneys across the country vowed to resist state abortion bans that came into effect when the federal right to abortion ended in June.

Other cities and towns have also tried to wrest the abortion issue out of state hands – the New Orleans city council passed a similar resolution in July 2022, and Rodnor, Pennsylvania, passed an ordinance trying to pre-empt any future abortion ban, should one take hold in the state.

Anti-abortion advocates have also used similar logic to create so-called “sanctuary cities for the unborn” in states where abortion rights are protected.

But the San Antonio initiative would be the first of its kind explicitly banning law enforcement from criminally investigating abortion. “[Currently], police are still actually allowed to make arrests or conduct investigations for so-called abortion crimes,” said Mike Siegel, the co-founder of Ground Game Texas, one of the groups organizing around the petition.

“But if the voters approve our justice charter, police will be banned from taking any enforcement action.”

It is also the first example of a group attempting to undermine state policy at the city level through a ballot proposal – so far, city councils, not citizens, have been the ones passing initiatives bucking state laws on abortion.

“It’s not just city council members passing a resolution. The strategy is to show that thousands and thousands of San Antonians do not want to have abortion be a crime in the city,” said Rachel Rebouché, interim dean at Temple Law School.

The city clerk’s office has until 8 February to verify the signatures. Organizers say they have collected well beyond the 20,000 signatures required to put the initiative on the May ballot, in anticipation of some signatures being rejected – as is common during the verification process.

If the initiative passes in May, it will throw up novel legal questions over whether state law trumps local law in such cases. Those questions could be tested in court.

“It essentially pits the city against the state,” said Rebouché. “It could be one of the first cases that we see litigated where the city is sued, or questioned by the state, which could assert its power that state law should override city policy.”

Siegel believes the campaigners are on strong legal footing, because San Antonio is a so-called “home rule” city, which, under the Texas constitution, enjoys some autonomy from the state.

Whatever its fate, Rebouché said the symbolic message of the effort is a powerful one. “It may not have legal force … but it certainly does something similar to Kansas, or Kentucky, where it became clear that there is popular antipathy for these abortion restrictions,” she said.

Siegel said he hoped San Antonio will be a blueprint for similar ballots in other cities in Texas. If successful, he believes this could be a substantial roadblock to the Texas abortion ban, because the state relies heavily on city police.

He said: “City police make up the vast majority of law enforcement in the state of Texas. If we can convince the big cities to say ‘we won’t use our police’, that will take away most of the state’s ability to enforce these laws.”